Get an International SIM card

It would obviously depend whether you would be calling within EU or outside. However, below are a few suggestions from not well known network providers. The best thing is that all of these run on their “parent” networks such as O2 and Vodafone, so the reception quality does not suffer at all.

The below table sets out the prices for international calls using our recommended network providers. Please note that the countries have been chosen intentionally representing the highest percentage of immigrants from the particular nation. All you need to do is to order a free sim card by filling in the online form.

In most cases, if you need to make an occasional international call the best value package is offered by the Delight Mobile – there is no need to make any special top-ups or buy any special bundles to get excellent rates and they also offer extra free credit on every top-up, for example topping up £10 will give you £15 credit.

However, if you are planning to spend hours talking with your international friends it is worthwhile to check out the international calling packages/bundles offered by Vectone, Lebara and Lyca operators, which give you a set number of minutes for a set amount.

Install Viber on your smart phone

Statistically, 27% of mobile phone users in the UK use smart phones. Viber is an application that you can install on your smart phone. Viber lets you use your smart phone to make free calls and send free text and photo messages to other Viber users, on any device, network and country.

With Viber, your contacts on your device are also your Viber contacts, because Viber automatically detects your contacts who already have Viber. All you need to do is click on a name and start talking.

It was originally designed for an iPhone, however, it is now available for such platforms as Android and Windows.

International Calling on Skype

Obviously to have Skype you have to either have an access to computer or smartphone with Internet on it. However, with Skype credit you can call mobiles and landlines at low per minute rates.

For example:

A call to Polish landline would only cost you 1.4p/min and to mobile 14.5p/min – what is much cheaper than a call from any major mobile network provider who usually charges you at least 17p/min. The prices vary for each country and you can get really amazing deals – all calls to India at 4.7p/min! Whilst 1.4p/min to United States (3p/min to Alaska – for some reason)! You can either pre-pay to buy credit allowance (pay-as-you-go) or pay monthly to get specific allowance if you use this service regularly.

To buy Skype credit or get a subscription follow this link. You can either use PayPal or your debit/credit card to make a payment.

What I use

I have an O2 Simplicity contract which I am generally quite happy with (except the low 500mb allowance for the internet). I am currently enjoying unlimited (nearly – 3000 minutes a month) calls to 3 different landline numbers in the EU country that I have chosen. What I have is a bolt on called International Favourites. Just recently they have added an another bonus that is 100 minutes to chosen mobile phone numbers, however, you would have to loose one landline number to set up a mobile one. The 100 mins promotion runs until 03/01/12 unless it gets extended. All of this for an extra £10 a month and can be added to any O2 monthly and pay as you go plan.

Calling Cards

The last option is to use an international calling card. It is only useful if you have a contract sim already and do not want to have a separate one for international calling. I would still prefer adding one of the international bolt-ons (just check what is available with your existing operator) as you always need to carry that card with you, dial special number, then enter pin code and you may not get excellent rates – just too much hassle…but that just my preference ;)

Source: Cheap International Calls From Your Mobile

Benefits are usually paid into a bank account to ensure security, and convenience. But, how do you know if you are eligible for benefits? You need to check if any of the following apply to you: low income (currently employed or still looking for work with less than £16,000 in savings), living and working in the UK for at least three months, you have children who depend on you, ill or disabled, you are taking care of someone, you are 60 or older, or you have been bereaved. You can always use government provided Benefits Advisor tool (link provided at the bottom of this page) to check your eligibility.

Three very important parts of the benefits in the UK are the statutory sick pay, child care (or child maintenance), and council tax benefits.

Statutory Sick Pay

The statutory sick pay applies when you are employed under a contract, have average weekly earnings of at least £107, and have been sick for four days in a row (including weekends, and holidays). Your must tell your employer that you are sick, and provide him with some form of medical evidence after being sick for eight days. If all of this applies, the statutory sick pay is remunerated by your employer, directly into your bank account, with a standard weekly rate of £85.85; though, this might be subject to change depending on your circumstances.

Child benefit

Childcare, or child maintenance, is financial support for your child’s daily living cost. The way it works is fairly straightforward: the parent who does not have the daily care of the child pays whoever takes care of his child, be it another parent, grandparent, or guardian. If all of the above is not possible, parents can seek the help of the Child Support Agency (CSA) to get advice.

Council tax benefit

Council tax benefits are applicable when you earn a low income, even if you do not work or are in the process of looking for work. To see if you are eligible for the council tax benefit, there are numerous online benefits advisers. Depending on who you are, you may get a tax reduction percentage ranging from 7.5% to 25%.

Housing benefit

Another very important aspect of being in the UK is the housing benefit. Living in the UK can be very pricey, especially if you are living in London, but thankfully the government will help those who do not earn enough and cannot pay their rent without support. Those follow the same rules as the aforementioned benefits; you are eligible to get housing benefits if you pay rent, if your income is below a certain level and if your savings are below £16,000. Whether you are able to work in the UK, looking for a job or unemployed does not matter as long as you earn a low income. On the other hand, if you have savings over £16,000, live in the home of a close relative, are a full time student, or are an asylum seeker you will not be eligible to get benefits.

If you do already get support from the government, one very important element is to report any changes in your personal circumstances. If you fail to do so you may be prosecuted, asked to pay a penalty, get a reduction or withdrawal of benefits, or asked to repay the overpaid benefits. If you are not sure what you are supposed to do, you can always contact the Citizens Advice Bureau, who can help you in case you are being suspected of fraud.

If you are an expat living and working in the UK, you should not have too much cause to worry. If you do not earn enough money to fully sustain yourself, the British government will be here to help.

Source: Benefits in the UK

It is great if you are targeting specific area/postcode you already know and like, but what if you do not have anyone to advise you? You should not always trust comments from people posting on forums – usually reality is different to what they see and two people living in the same postcode can post two conflicting views depending on what previous experiences they had.

The Solution

Luckily, there is a tool called “Financial Strategy Segments Interactive Guide” which you can use to check any UK postcode and get information about what kind of people live in that particular area including information on: average age, education, income, debt status, marital status and employment status. Lets look at one of the examples:

How the hell does that work and where does that information come from you might ask? I uncovered this tool in one of consumer research/marketing sessions presented at work. It is used by large companies to look where the target audience lives. All data is collected by credit agencies, in this case Experian. Credit companies will always know your current residency through your council / electoral payroll – this gives them your age/status. Phone contracts, loans, mortgages, interest from investments, credit cards, overdraft, number of current accounts and all your payments history is logged by them giving them overall view of who you are and how good you are with your money. All people are then mapped to postcode they live in and that’s how the magic is done.

Accessing post-code check tool

Normally you would need to request access to use this tool, but we managed to get a direct access link and it is available here. Just enter the postcode you would like to check and click “Go”. Data is from year 2011, so it is quite recent, but it might not include some newly developed areas.

There are loads of information you can get out of this great interactive website, but the “Key features” section is probably all you will need to make the decision for your next move ;)

Source: The best guide for house movers. How to check the area (postcode) before your next move

How to prepare for your performance appraisal?

By the time you attend a performance interview you should:

• Know your responsibilities in depth. However ridiculous this sounds you need to read your job description and know it by heart. You need to make sure you have a good example for each responsibility and task assigned to you.
• Take notes of any significant tasks you performed and responsibilities you have taken over throughout the year. It is very important to keep a diary or at least a notepad file with your thoughts.
• Maintain good relationship with your Manager and senior people (if there are any) within your team all the time. If you do something important – go and mention it to your manager. You should never rely on other people to say how great you are – always look for opportunities to demonstrate that yourself.
• Complete the performance review questions. It is usually on a company intranet where you login onto your profile and provide responses to criteria which your performance is based on, examples of which include:
  • Financial objectives (meeting monetary/sales targets, minimising exposure to losses)
  • Customer objectives (delivering professional service)
  • Process objectives (taking ownership of work allocated)
  • People objectives (working towards common team goals)
  • Development areas

How your performance rating is calculated?

Every company does this differently so there is no common way of how your personal performance rating will be calculated. However, we will give you some examples for you to get a draft understanding.

Very common is 5 points system. 1 meaning the outstanding performance wheres 5 reflecting an inadequate one, or the other way around. Then the points are converted into words – 1 equal to being “outstanding”, 2 being “strong”, 3 being “good/moderate”, 4 being “below average” and 5 being “weak”. Generally, getting the top rating should mean the highest percentage increase in your pay as well as the biggest share of the “bonus pot”.

What should happen after you produce your responses these should be reviewed by your manager and usually their senior manager. Technically, they would then gather around around the table and discuss each of them. However, everyone is so busy that they really can’t be bothered to do this. And your manager decides your destiny way in advance before you even respond to those questions. The reality is that all of this paperwork is required legally so that employers could not be sued for unfair treatment and etc. As long as everything is documented – employers are covered.

DON’Ts

During the performance review, don’t:

• Talk about your colleagues who do their jobs worse then you do. The performance review is only about YOUR performance. Do not mention any names, talk abstractly, however, where necessary base your responses on real examples.
• Lie or invent new things. Try not to be too critical but don’t praise yourself for things that were insignificant or did not actually happen (and just think this would have slipped through your manager’s eyes/ears). Know that your manager will not give you credit for what he has not witnessed.
• Exaggerate. Even though some tasks might have felt as a huge responsibility to you, don’t forget that your manager probably has been in your place at some point in his life and most likely had same responsibilities as you do now. In that case they are very familiar with your role and they will know if you are trying to make things look more impressive than they really are.

How much can I expect?

Well this is completely subjective. However, we understand you want an example at least to get something tangible from this article. So here is one.

In financial services industry bonuses are average and fluctuate between 5% to 40% of your yearly pay. However, the vast majority get their “13th salary” each year as a bonus, therefore it would generally mean they get 1/12 of their yearly salary. Employers like giving you 10% if you get rated at 2 “strong” or 3 “very good”. 5% is usually a minimum. The higher up in the company you are, the higher percentage of your pay you are likely to get as a bonus.

In terms of pay, the usual increase is currently just to match inflation (if you are lucky), therefore, in the same sector you can expect something like 2% to 4% of your yearly pay. Doesn’t sound anything major? Well, this is just a general increase every year if your corporation doesn’t decide to freeze salaries during the economically tough periods. Try increasing your pay by 4% each year and it will not sound so small anymore. If you earn £20,000 a year in ten years time your salary would go up by £10,000, and remember – this excludes any promotions that are more than likely to happen during those 10 years.

Unfortunately, after the big economic downturn and current threats of double dip recession, companies are very cautious to give out bigger increases and you are very lucky if you get 4% increase each year (usually only if you new to the company and on the lower side of the pay scale only). However, this is not hopefully not going to last forever.

Performance reviews in smaller companies

What happens in smaller companies is absolutely subjective. Generally all you need is to impress your boss and be friendly and helpful to your colleagues, and of course hit all financial or sales targets and deadlines where possible. How your pay rise is decided is completely up to you as an individual and your tangible results, therefore, usually a written review is not required.

*Should you have any questions or think that we forgot to cover something in relation to this topic, please leave comments below and we will update our article with our comments.

Source: Performance Reviews. Average Pay Rise + Bonus in larger companies

Ordering takeaway over the phone

Since this is the service of increasing popularity you have probably noticed by now that the variety is pretty incredible. Meals can come from East such as Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Pakistani, Japanese, Turkish, Thai as well as from West – American, Mexican, Jamaican, etc. What I personally hate is deciding on takeaway. And what usually happens I go either for the one that I always do, or for the one which menu is on my coffee table. Since if I want to order over the phone, I have to actually know who to call and therefore I either have to google for phone numbers or have that freaking menu. And if I google for phone number I still have to freakin’ have the menu!

Here is a solution and its benefits:

1. No more hassle with the menus all around your house
2. No more hassle on finding local takeaways
3. No more hassle with cash (unless you prefer)
4. And lots lots lots lots of choice
5. Estimated delivery time

Ordering takeaway over the Internet

So we introduce the online ordering of takeaways! This is now the only way how we order our takeaways and this is the best with all of the above benefits.
Probably the majority you have now tried Domino’s Pizza but have tried ordering it online? Well for me personally it is much more convenient rather than trying to explain over the phone what a party of 6 wants or doesn’t want on each of their pizzas or trying to remember who wants what side. Usually after the delivery is made you discover something’s missing or you have extra. So Domino’s Pizza were more or less the first ones who re-invented the way to order takeaways. And their website is amazing! You can choose all of your meals and even apply the discount codes if you are lucky to find some on the internet or on paper brochures.

So following this idea the major takeaways websites have recently launched. In fact that’s a lie. They have not launched just recently. They actually existed for a long time but they finally made enough money to advertise themselves on TV and so. Here are our two favourites:

• Just-eat.co.uk – our favourite because of its biggest variety of all websites
• Hungryhouse.co.uk

We cannot really decide which one we like more as they have very similar principle, however, the offer of the takeaways is a little bit bigger on Just-eat.co.uk, whilst Hungryhouse.co.uk offers some different takeaways. So basically you need to check out both before you order.

The best feature of these is that you can rate the takeaways and then, for example, if you are new to the area or new to the cuisine you are trying out, you can sort them in an order of customer rating what makes your choice much more reliable.

And some extra websites that we found on google (I love how obvious website names are):

• 5pm.co.uk – they do 10% off your first order
• eatitnow.co.uk – only specialise in Pizza, Chinese & Indian food
• fillmybelly.com – no extra charge for using your credit card
• meal2go.com

Our favourite is still Chinese! Especially, Cantonese style Sweet & Sour dishes.

We hope you will enjoy your weekend takeaway treats even more with this convenient way of ordering them! Enjoy your meals!

IAMintheUK Team

Source: Order Your Takeaway Online

But it does get better! By shopping online almost 80% of the time you can pay a lower price compared to buying the same item directly in the store. Yes, some items you should put on before buying and there is a risk associated with buying something online that could not fit your perfectly shaped body, but nobody said you could not try something in the store and then buy it later online – cheaper!

So how does it work?

You may have heard of Cashback sites and if you are using one – that’s great, you are probably making the most of your online shopping already! If you shop online and I am not limiting this to just clothes – you can be ordering cosmetics from Superdrug or Boots, food from one of the supermarkets or buying something from eBay – you can get some money back from almost every single purchase you make. Just follow this procedure and you will never pay the full price for your online shopping again:

STEP 1: Register for one of the Cashback sites. My favourite is TopCashBack. Why? Because it is reliable, one of the most popular in the UK and it is absolutely FREE to use. Click here to register – it takes less than a minute

STEP 2: Search for an online shop you wish to order something from. For example you wish you buy some premium chocolate from Thorntons, so we enter “thorntons” in the search box at the top of the website and click “Search”

STEP 3: Click “CashBack” button next to the result you have been looking for. As you can see at the time of writing Thorntons offered a whooping 12.12% cashback!

STEP 4: Now just click “Get Cashback Now” button and you will be automatically transferred to the normal Thorntons online store.

STEP 5: Just shop as normal! Just buy your favourite sweets!

So what’s next?

In next 48 hours if transaction was successful a record will appear on your “Earnings” tab. In the example above, if you order something for a total value of £100, you should expect to see £12.12 pending payment! Usually it will become “Confirmed” in the next 2 months and “Payable” in the next 6 months – all depends on how fast the company pays out their customers. Every time you shop online, just repeat steps 2-5 and your money will start accumulating. After you feel you have enough money with “Payable” status, just go to Payments section and click “Pay me”! Payout is FREE and you can get your money transferred to your Paypal account, UK bank account or get your payment in the form of Amazon vouchers! Easy as that! Enjoy your savings!

CashBack FAQ

Source: How to get a discount while shopping online? UK Cashback websites

These days everyone knows that college or university education is no longer valued that much. This is clear considering the fact that there are over 300 institutions in the UK including universities, colleges of higher education and further education colleges that offer higher education courses. Consider the fact how many people attend those institutions and graduate each year.

As for this reason the UK kind of invented professional certifications which you achieve through work, study and experience. These are offered and awarded by different bodies, for instance:

• The Chartered Institute of Marketing
• The Chartered Institute for IT
• The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys
• The Chartered Institute of Taxation
• The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health

And the list goes on and on…

(http://www.careercompanion.co.uk/files/page_element/Professional_Bodies.pdf)

Therefore, virtually to be a little bit more distinctive from the crowd you need to be a member of one of these “societies” and hold one of the certificates they offer.

What are Chartered Institutes?

There are more than 750 Chartered Institutes in the UK. These are professional bodies which issue royal charters. A Royal Charter changes a body from a collection of individuals into a single legal entity. Once incorporated by Royal Charter, amendments to the Charter and by-laws require government approval. To put it simple these are organisations which have a licence to operate and are not just common societies, therefore, have high reputation and recognition. As for this reason, it is considered to have a privilege and honour as a member of one.

The benefits of holding a professional body certificate

• Adds value to your CV
• Confirms that you are professional (however, ridiculous that sounds)
• Gives some honour for employer to have you in his team
• Increases your chances for promotion & better salary
• Demonstrates your dedication to the job sector you are in (the certificate in IT generally would not give you any benefit if you look for a job in environmental health sector, whilst if you have a job related certificate it will be less likely (from employer’s point of view) that you are not going to run off whenever you get offered more money)
• Through studying it deepens and widens your knowledge of the work you do
• Chartered membership confirms to peers and employers that you have delivered against the activities, knowledge and behaviours set for the Chartered Member criteria

What do those silly letters mean alongside the names of some professionals mean?

If you a member of professional body and have a Chartered status (usually you can become one if you pass their assessment and have at least 10 years of experience) they allow you to use the professional designation Chartered “SILLY LETTERS” after your name. So say if you were Certified Management Accountant you could use “John Smith ACMA” in your signature. Whist if you are also a member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners you could go “John Smith ACMA CFE”.

Relatively inexpensive

And the main reason why I personally suggest you start working on one is that they are relatively cheap in comparison to the University education. Currently you probably would pay at least £4,000 a year for your Masters degree. Whereas the certificates offered by Chartered Institutes would usually cost less, sometimes as much as £500 for the whole certificate including study packs and exams.

Partly qualified

Another good thing is that you can be part qualified. Let’s say you have passed two exams out of three which are counting towards your certificate. You generally receive a diploma for each exam passed and you can already put that into your CV! Whilst unfinished University degree does not really make much of the difference plus it requires much more work and dedication in order to graduate.

So I suggest go through the list of Professional Bodies, choose whatever you want to do and get on with your studying. It is really worth it!

Btw, everything also applies to any competence-based qualifications that are useful to hold if you do not already have University or College degree.

(http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/QualificationsExplained/DG_10039029)

Source: Certificates of Professional Bodies

Standard credit card APR can be anywhere between 9.9 to 34.99%+, let’s take the popular example and say that your credit card has an APR of 19.9%. If you bought something worth £2,000 and decide to pay back only a minimum amount (the greater of 1% of the balance plus interest or £5) per month, you would pay off your debt in 24 years and 4 months and by that time you will have paid off £2,854 in interest alone! That means that instead of £2,000 you return your bank £4,854!

Even if you decide to pay off your balance in one year (£185.17 every month) you will be returning £2,222.04 after one year. If you used your savings account you would have an extra £222.04 in your pocket! To make things worse, the majority of people never ever get off the credit card debt meaning they pay of some of the balance and later make more purchases on the card and loose their money month after month. I have an office job and I have colleagues who earn twice as me, and all they do at the end of each month is cover the minimum amount of their credit card bill!

The fifth option is to take a pay day loan. I really do not like even the fact that I am mentioning it here, but people see advertising on the TV (QuickQuid.com) and they do use this. This is probably the worst place to get a loan from all possible places, maybe even worse than asking for money from a drug dealer (Just for a record, I am not suggesting doing this either).

The advertised service QuickQuid.com offers you to get a loan from £50 to £1,000 as a new customer and even up to £1,500 for existing ones. But if you look at the terms you will see that the APR is 1,734% Representative! Representative means that only 51% of people will get this deal and others will be offered even higher interest rates. I mentioned that standard credit card offers 19.9% APR, but QuickQuid quotes APR of 1,734% which is unimaginably worse. Anyway, you cannot directly compare effective credit card APR to QuickQuid APR without doing extra calculations since it is not the same thing. This is because QuickQuid and other Pay Day Loan companies use Finance Charge in APR calculation and it is different to standard credit card interest calculation:

Credit Card interest calculation

• Work out your average daily balance. Let’s make it simple and say you buy something for £1,000 on the billing day 1 and then something else on a day 15 for another £1,000. If month has 30 days calculation is: (15 x 1,000 + 15 x 2,000) / 30 = £1,500.
• Calculate the daily interest rate. Simply take APR of your card and divide it by the number of days in a year. If APR is 19.9% and current year has 365 days, daily interest rate would be 0.0545%.
• Now take average daily balance, multiply it by average daily interest rate and multiply the result by the number of days in a month. £1,500 x 0.0545% x 30 days = 2,453.42 pence / 100 = £24.53
• Most credit cards will charge you interest on interest, meaning if you do not pay off your balance in full, interest from previous month will be included in interested calculations for the next month.

QuickQuid interest calculation taking into account the Finance Charge

• You pay £14.75 Finance Charge per each £50 you take
• To make things comparable with Credit Card and let’s take out a maximum £1,500 loan (average balance of credit card example above).
• After one month interest would be (£1,500 / 50) * £14.75 = £442.50 (This is equivalent to 354% APR Credit Card charge), now compare it to £24.53 you would pay for your credit card!
• The longer you wait – the higher the effective APR becomes!
• You should use this service only if you have NO other option and you are 100% SURE you will be able to pay the loan back on the next Pay Day.

I hope I have made some things clearer for someone… Beware and Share

Source: Beware of emergency (Pay day) loans: APR explained

You should always read Terms and Conditions which are usually well hidden and in a very small font before renting a car and take into account all extra and hidden fees before making up your mind. I decided to go through 4 largest and well known international car rental companies and get a quote for the same class (B – Economy) car for the same period of time – 7 full days, starting and finishing at 9:00 and car taken and returned from the same airport (in my case Edinburgh). I listed prices for all extras offered during the booking and went into Terms and Conditions to get more details on age requirements and Excess fee’s. Here are the results:

Last updated October, 2011
Vehicle	(B) Vauxhall Corsa or similar	(B) PEUGEOT 107 or similar	(B) Opel Corsa(or similar) Economy 4dr	(B) Vauxhall Corsa 3dr
Online Price	£96.90	£124.00	£96.90	£112.92
Pay at location	£112.40	£136.40	-	£121.88
Excess Fee	£650	£600	From £550	£1000
Excess waiver	Super Cover weekly. £109.20	Risk Reduction cover. £63 (UK only, includes one additional driver for free)	£33.25	Extended loss damage waiver. £24.43 reduces excess to £500
Child seet / Infant Childs seet	£67.20	£77.00	£67.20	£43.40
Booster car seat	£25.20	£42	£21	£43.40
Navigation	£78.00	£70.00	£117.60	£58.80
Additional Driver	£75.60	£56.00	£75.60	£36.47
Minimum Age	23	21	23	21
Young driver surcharge (up to 25)	£132.30 (MAX £189 per rent)	£111.97	£132.30	£80.50
Link to website	Hertz	Europcar	Holiday Autos	Sixt

Conclusions

As you can see from the table above, there isn’t one universal best option for everyone. For example while Sixt car rental price is higher than Hertz or Holidays autos it would still offer cheaper rent for someone who is under 25 as young driver surcharge is much lower than competitors. Do not forget to add up child seats and navigation costs in the total price before making up your mind. I need to draw your attention to Excess Fee part – this is what you would pay if you return your car damaged or have an accident. This ranges from around £550 to £2000 depending on the car you rent and the company. You may not realise but even if you have a tiny scratch on the bumper rental companies usually do not even attempt to fix it but buy a brand new one asking you to pay excess fee which could be even higher than the cost of the new part. In addition, it might be that it even wasn’t you who left that scratch but someone else prior to you – this scratch was not recorded on the day of your rental! To avoid getting into this situation I highly recommend you:

• Look carefully around the car and fill in details of all defects/scratches you can find.
• Take high resolution (with proper camera not your 4 year old phone) photos of the card from all sides prior to driving off.
• Take Excess fee waiver. In this case even if you miss out something you will not be required to pay anything as your excess will go down to zero. It is technically taking insurance for insurance, but it is really worth it if you want peace of mind. BUT: do not make a mistake and get this waiver from the company itself! For example Hertz would charge you £109.20 to waive excess fee. Instead you should use a icarhireinsurance service which would cover excess fee up to £2000 for all 7 days for just £20.92! It is £2.99 a day or £39.99 for the whole year – this is handy if you rent a car more than once a year.

If you still would like to compare prices with more than 4 above listed companies, we recommend using service like carrentals which we tested ourselves and it does show accurate pricing from most rental companies and offers nice and clean user interface.

Source: Renting a car in the UK

I bought the Extra Virgin Mineral™ Loose Powder Foundation from the Body Shop using 25% discount and free delivery code. I eventually paid £11.25 for it and believe me it is 101% worth it. Reasons for it are:

• It is great for sensitive skin. I have been using it for a week and there has been a visible improvement. It works as a treatment to your skin.
• Your skin does not get dry or oily throughout a whole day. I have a mixed face skin type with some parts of it being extremely oily and other parts such as my cheeks and top of my nose being very dry. I also work in an office where it get really warm sometimes and my skin used to react to this by getting oily. This foundation honestly does miracles.
• I don’t know about you but it really makes me smile when some girls who have bright skin go orange or chocolate brown. Well, that’s an another bonus for this foundation. If you go for a shade similar to your skin colour when you wearing it – nobody will even notice that. You will get out your natural look which can be matched with the same brand liquid foundation for more impressive evening looks.

Don’t get me wrong I did not get paid to recommend this particular brand. There are quite a few other great products out there which can be also more affordable:

• No7 Mineral Loose Foundation Powder £14.50@Boots – don’t forget your to use Boots Advantage Card
• MeMeMe Radiant Minerals Foundation (Liquid) £7.25@Superdrug – don’t forget your to use Beauty Card
• Maybelline Mineral Liquid Foundation £8.19@Superdrug
• L’Oreal True Match Minerals Foundation £14.99@Superdrug
• Elizabeth Arden Pure Finish Mineral Powder Foundation £24.00@Debenhams
• Clinique Redness Solutions Instant Relief Mineral Powder £24.50@Debenhams

Prices above were correct on 8/10/2011. Let me know if you tried any of the above – leave your review in the comment section below.

Source: Minerals Foundation